Authors Note: Man, it took me a long time to finally get this up here. It's been sitting around on my computer, and I finally put it up…why the hold up? Who knows. Anyway…Jack, one-shot. Please read and review!
They say that scent is the strongest scent tied to memory. I always doubted this, saying that surely my sight was stronger, surely my eyes (supposed windows to a soul that still belonged to you) prevailed over the nose that I'd never been very fond of. That is, I thought this until you had to leave.
Once you were gone and the wrinkles on your side of the bed had faded to a smooth state of nothing, everything that I turned to reminded me of you. I would walk through a department store and catch a whiff of cologne. The scent would wash over me and I would find myself Christmas shopping with you, struggling through the crowds of crying children, harried mothers and mall Santa's to try to find the perfect gift for your little sister. I remember that you were determined to make her smile, to make her forget about your dad being gone, to make her realize that you would always be there. We painstakingly combed through dozens of stores, before you finally settled on a beautiful doll with spiraling black hair and vibrant blue eyes. Her clothes were fluffy, whipped concoctions of silk and lace, and I had the faint urge to recreate her ornate dress, to parade around the living room and declare myself porcelain. You took a picture of your sister as she was opening her present early on Christmas morning. Her eyes were lit up, a feminine version of your own swirling brown, and I smiled whenever I walked by your old refrigerator and saw it hanging there proudly.
I was walking down a crowded street when I happened to smell Indian food, and of course it reminded me of you. I stopped, waiting for the crowd to part around me, and I barely even heard the muttered swears thrown in my direction. The sting of curry overtook my nostrils, and I was instantly transported to your shabby living room. To that time that we had gotten Indian "take away" (you refused to call it take out, saying that take away sounded more romantic and thoroughly more British), rented old musicals and sat on blankets on top of your old hardwood floor, eating and laughing and singing and just being.
I was talking with my mother when she casually started to burn a candle and the smell of lilacs filled the room. Remember the time I made you go dress shopping with me? I had been invited to a wedding (another one of my high school friends, convinced that they had found "the one", married away at 20), and I was dragging you along. It would be our first real public appearance as a couple, and I was determined to look good. You were convinced that I wanted to look better than the bride. I'm not even sure if I could argue that. I'd tried on about a million dresses, constantly asking about my figure, the color, the drape of the fabric, this strap or that beading. I knew, as you sat in the hard dressing room chair, that you didn't pay attention, or at least I didn't think you had. But as we were walking away from the store, feet scraping against the ground and trendy shopping bags in hand, you found a little side street flower shop and bought a bunch of lilacs, to match the purple hue of my final purchase. Pretty ridiculous of me to get so worked up over flowers, but I remember hugging you for a good five minutes.
Even the pungent smell of fresh paint reminds me of you. Of the time that we decided my damp living room needed a make over. We went out and bought ten containers of paint, sufficiently blowing my meager paycheck from those past two weeks. We splashed the walls with reds and whites and grays and just a little bit of black, leaving a swirling mass of clashing colors in our wake. A week later, I had to paint it a dark, dark blue just to cover up the mess we had made. You called it art, an "expression of two turbulent souls", but most people would have called it just plain ugly.
I had to throw out my perfume. You bought it for me, and every spray reminded me of your eyes, of the way you would look at me (like I was the only person in the world that mattered, like I was the only girl that would ever fill your vision) as we were all dressed up and "ready to hit the town." Meaning, of course, a movie and a cheap dinner at best, most likely spaghetti at that place in Little Italy that you loved so much. You would drag me out onto the tiny dance floor, knowing that everyone in the place was watching us, and sing into my ear, echoing Frank Sinatra as he played softly from some unknown speaker. You always had a much better voice than you gave yourself credit for; there was a rawness and a tenderness to it that captivated me. And, I'd felt so wasteful throwing away that pretty perfume bottle, with the amber liquid suspended in it's faceted crystal, but it was one last splinter of you that I was finally removing.
I still see you sometimes, wandering down the hallways in your carelessly elegant clothes. The wrinkled oxford I used to wear around your apartment, the worn blue jeans that I'd repaired so many times. Once, while you were entering the auditorium for an audition or a speech or and I-don't-know-what, I saw you wearing that ridiculous lucky cowboy hat of yours. I had to gulp the stale air to stop myself from crying. You used to make me wear that hat as I mailed away manuscripts, hoping to be published in this magazine, that collection…anywhere. It would flop over my eyes, fall down far over my ears, and I would impatiently push back the heavy black material. You would pull it over your own mop of cinnamon hair, smile impishly, and sling me over your shoulder, tearing me away from the post box that would surely carry a rejection letter back to me. You would say that I could never be a cowgirl, but you loved me anyway. You loved me. I remember when you loved me.
But, even as these visions tear me apart, I do my best not to catch your scent, because my sight is much more forgiving. My mind will erase your image one day, and my heart will start to heal, but your cologne, your soap, the way your favorite t-shirt smelled as I lay next to you on a lazy Sunday morning, that can catch me off guard. And it can bring up all the other memories; it can hurt me all over again.